At its on-going annual developer conference; Google I/O, Mountain View-based internet firm, Google Corp. has announced its adding more features to its digital concierge, Google Assistant.
According to reports by NDTV news, Google Assistant is getting six (6) new voices – including one based on that of musician John Legend – later this year. It will also encourage kids to be polite by thanking them when they say please, similar to a feature Amazon is bringing to its Alexa voice assistant.
The assistant is said to be getting a feature that allows it to talk with ordinary people at businesses for tasks such as restaurant reservations using a technology, called Duplex, although the feature is still in development.
“Hi, I’m calling to book a hair appointment for a client,” said a realistic-sounding automated voice in a demo from the conference stage.
The AI assistant deployed pauses and “ums” and “mmm-hmms” to sound more human in conversation with real people.
Google said it will roll out the technology, called Duplex, as an experiment in coming weeks. “We really want to work hard to get this right,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who kicked off the conference, known as Google I/O.
The search giant aims to make its assistant so useful that people can’t live without them.
